1) It is theft and therefore illegal.2) It results ultimately in fewer and more expensive software products.3) It is a ‘poor’ way to repay the music community.4) It is often ‘malware’ and can potentially damage your pc.5) It is GMC policy not to condone the use or discussion of where and how to get/use ‘crackware’ and illegal filesharing.

It seems opportune to write this now and pin it as a closed thread. I have and use a fair few pieces of music software - commercial, shareware and freeware – sitting on my music PC are sequencers like Reaper, Live!, Reason; the wave editors Audacity and Cool Edit; various soft synths including Reaktor, Sylenth, Pentagon and Atmosphere; two samplers Kontakt and Halion; and various effects and mastering tools including ones from PSP, Sonalkis, Har-Bal and Ozone. If I was to add up the cost of all of this and tell my wife it would probably lead to a divorce. If she knew how much I spend just updating these she would have a fit!

All my software – not just music – however is legal. I don’t use pirated or ‘crackware’ – never have and never will. If I can’t afford some software then I will in the first instance attempt to get a shareware or freeware version. If none are available that I like then I wait until I have saved the money and then buy the software. I don’t have a high income so saving up potentially hundreds of Euros can take me a while and I often find it frustrating to have to wait. But wait I do and what follows are my reasons why I do this rather then use ‘crackware’.

Moral and ethical considerations.I lecture in Ethics and Morals and one early lecture is a discussion that is extremely relevant to his subject. In it I argue (backed up by some philosophical heavyweights) that the rule that we should live by is basically one of ‘do unto others as you would like done to you’. Or to put this another way: if I steal then I must accept it without complaint if someone broke in to my house and stole all my guitars. ‘Crackware’ is theft and I don’t want someone stealing my possessions.

In most countries software piracy is a felony – not just pirating software but having and using it. It is breaking the law. Like it or not we live in a society and as such should abide by its laws. The laws are there to help maintain and protect society so if you break the law by using ‘crackware’ then expect to pay the price.

It seems that some view piracy as something ‘cool’ that they do as a mark of their ‘living on the edge’ of society or outside it. If you wish to live outside society then you should repay what you have had from it first. Curiously I have yet to meet anyone who has repaid society adequately for their housing, healthcare, education and so on.

Music software is expensive to develop, test, debug and market. Many of the companies involved are small operations. Many make little profit and are often run by a few people who are just passionate about music. ‘Crackware’ eats in to profit both because it reduces revenue and because it means that the companies spend time and money implementing protection routines. Sooner or later someone pays for the lost revenue and increased costs – either the price of the product goes up and/or the company uses time implementing protection rather then coding new or improved products and/or the organization goes bust and/or the staff in the company are paid less or lose their jobs. So ‘crackware’ costs us all –for customers via fewer, more expensive products; and for staff in lost income and jobs.

I’ve spent many years in and around the recording industry and am lucky enough to know a number of people and to have learnt from them. They have a passion for music, recording and technology. In my experience people are nearly always generous with their time and help and often view this as a way of repaying the help and advice they received along the way. If you look at the boards of the music software forums you can see many of these people providing help and advice. Music production and recording is a small community. Using ‘crackware’ isn’t stealing from someone unknown – you may well be stealing from someone who has given you help and guidance or from whom you might need to help in the future.

Music production and recording is a community – a small scale society if you will. If you use ‘crackware’ then you can’t expect to be well received in the community. Take a look at the number of flames in the forums when someone using ‘crackware’ asks for help. Personally I never refuse to help but if I suspect the person is using ‘crackware’ then my help is restricted to advising them to read the manual or contact the software company.

Technical reasons not to use ‘crackware’Most ‘crackware’ is downloaded from P2P sites. These sites often include items which contain viruses, Trojans and other malicious code. If you use ‘crackware’ you are actively choosing to download and run potentially malicious code.

Virus guards are not ideal for a DAW as most run in the background and monitor activity. Recording and mixing on a DAW takes time and an active, resident virus guard can have a detrimental affect on your pcs performance, slowing it down, reducing hard disc speed or activating when you least want it.

Because of theft most music software companies now protect their software either physically – ie via a dongle – or through software through some form of password code. I stopped using and buying software that is hardware protected partly because I got fed up with losing the dongles and having to spend time searching for them. In some instances hardware protection can cause incompatibility problems with pc hardware or other software that may result in a pc crash, poor performance or software that runs irratically or not at all. So my choice in software is restricted to those that do not use hardware protection.

Software protection is often some form of call and response system. For these systems I find that I have to keep a file of passwords, serial numbers and so on. Everytime I upgrade I have to dig the file out to find this information. Some of my software is locked to a pc component – the hard disc, network card and so on. If I change a component I then have to go through the task of re-authorising my software. Some software is coded to the original installation disc – lose the disc, or just don’t have it to hand, and the software won’t run. All of these methods require time that I would rather spend doing something else with.

So protecting software doesn’t just end up in additional development time and costs and therefore a more expensive product. It also results in inconvenience and may reduce choice and cause technical problems for the legitimate end-user.

Music software is in a state of continual development. The programs are often large and complicated and despite debugging a new version will often be followed up by a number of bug fixes and improvements or feature additions downloadable from the developer’s site. Access to these downloads nearly always requires product registration and so is not available to ‘crackware’ users. In a similar vein product registration is also nearly always required to access technical support. ‘Crackware’ has no technical support. Ironically ‘crackware’ that is ‘malware’ may actually cause technical problems.

Very recently there have some threads about whether we can download the backing tracks and/or lesson videos from GMC. These are both the exclusive intellectual property of, and copyrighted to, GMC and if someone pirated them it would result in lost income for GMC. Without this income GMC might cease to exist and we would all suffer as a result: we would lose the lessons, the instructors would lose an outlet for their lessons and skills and all the work that Kris, Henrik and Maria have put in would come to nothing. I’m sure that’s not an outcome any of us would want.

Software piracy is the theft of intellectual property and as such GMC cannot and will not condone it, or discussions of where to get or how to do file-sharing, cracked software and so on.[i]

Why not to use pirated or cracked softwareOr to put this another way: if I steal then I must accept it without complaint if someone broke in to my house and stole all my guitars. ‘Crackware’ is theft and I don’t want someone stealing my possessions.

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Technical reasons not to use ‘crackware’Most ‘crackware’ is downloaded from P2P sites. These sites often include items which contain viruses, Trojans and other malicious code. If you use ‘crackware’ you are actively choosing to download and run potentially malicious code.

First of all, good post with lots of valid arguments, however, there are some things I've got to say.

Filesharing is not like somebody going in and stealing all your guitars, it's more like someone coing in and copying your guitars and not paying you for it. (I personally wouldn't mind that)

And, you don't get viruses, trojans, etc from serious P2P sites, I'm not telling everybody do go and download everything, but I still want the truth to be told.

And, a personal note to everything about this. I don't think you should download stuff illegaly if you don't have to, try to find shareware and so on, and for the love of god, buy it if you can! But if you're young and/or poor and it's the only way to get something done and you really wouldn't have been able to do it otherwise, I won't mind. Just once you have the money for it, buy it. That's my standpoint, and I'm not saying I'm right or wrong, but this is how I look at piracy. (But when it comes to downloading music, movies and especially tv-series I have a completely different view that won't be discussed here )

I agree - try before buy is a way of fooling yourself you are doing the right thing. Most will never buy something they already have for free.

While that might be true for some people, others (such as myself) downloads a lot of albums, and then just make a list and buy as much as you can. And, I like spending money on concerts and stuff that the bands get more money from than just buying cd's (a downside with buying cd's can be that you're supposting record companies, if you don't like record companies). So, some people actually buy after they try, I bought about 35 cd's only in july and august this year, so there's still hope, or something.

Oh, and on the topic of downloading music or not, this is a good read.

And, I'm not encouraging anyone to download music, I'm just showing all the different coins so you can decide what you want to do. Showing just one side of the coin makes people (or me at least) think it's all bull**** and then just ignore all those arguments (wich might be perfectly valid).

I won't insult everyone by saying that I've never downloaded stuff (programs, music etc.) because I have. But it was always to "try before deciding to buy". I have always uninstalled/removed the programs or music after making my decision if it was for me or not. Not saying it's the perfect way but it's how I did/do things.

I do have a problem with a lot of people that call me an idiot because I'm prepared to pay for quality and support the artist/developer. I don't understand not supporting the people who make your life easier by making better programs or the music that you enjoy.

Where I might differ in opinion is about distribution. When a program is no longer available or when a music label no longer distributes certain albums. In gaming it would be called abandonware: Games no longer distributed/supported by developers or publishers. And for music if I can't get it any other way because the label doesn't distribute it, then yes I consider downloading because I don't want the music to disappear entirely.

Again this is only 1 person's opinion.

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There are 2 types of people in the world: consumers and creators. Which one are you?

So what happens to profit, when they sale fewer, because the market gets clipped by the illegal copies?

This is theft, if you do this, you are no different that some guy looting stores during some disaster, no different than somebody breaking into somebody's house and stealing their guitars. You are the same.

If you want to live in delusion, I can't stop you.

edit: there once was a time when I did use some illegal software, music. but I never kid myself into thinking I was not a thief when doing that. I quit doing it some time ago. I am not trying to insult anyone, just stating the facts, if you make illegal copies of intellectual property, you are a thief in doing so, that is just the way it is.

edit2: also our youtube downloads, same thing for most of it. I do that. it is wrong, but I do it. i probably should stop. just don't want to paint myself as an angel. but at least one should remember the phrase "to thy own self be true".

So what happens to profit, when they sale fewer, because the market gets clipped by the illegal copies.

This is theft, if you do this, you are no different that some guy looting stores during some disaster, no different than somebody breaking into somebody's house and stealing their guitars. You are the same.

If you want to live in delusion, I can't stop you.

edit: there once was a time when I did use some illegal software, music. but I never kid myself into thinking I was not a thief when doing that. I quit doing it some time ago. I am not trying to insult anyone, just stating the facts, if you make illegal copies of intellectual property, you are a thief in doing so, that is just the way it is.

Thank you for this insightful post!

I'm aware of the fact that they sell less because of this, but I'm talking about the 12 year old boy who gets like 12 Euros each months from their parents who won't afford that software for 2000 euros. He wouldn't have bought that, and his mom and dad wouldn't either.

So yeah, I'll keep living in delusion, hopefully one day I'll be a fully fledged Don Quixote.

EDIT: Oh yeah, and about that guitar thing, I wouldn't have made any profit of them copying my guitars either, instead of selling them to them, but I still wouldn't mind!

In the long run, I think you are better off respecting the property rights of others. It motivates you to figure out how you are going to succeed, to take care of things by your own talents and ability. If you just try to get things the sneaky and easy way, you fall into a pattern of behavior that is not a very productive pattern to fall into in the long term.

There's an interesting point of view about piracy, and that is, its the only way for "poor" people to get "access" to something, can be books. Anything. Im aware that its ilegal, but you know what im trying to prove here. It can be applied to many things and not only software.

to fkalich: Even though he isn't hungry, he's not damaging the industry (except that he might keep doing so when he's old and have money, but that's a different story..). And if you read my original post more than just the first three lines, you know that I agree with you. (or, mostly at least).

to fkalich: Even though he isn't hungry, he's not damaging the industry (except that he might keep doing so when he's old and have money, but that's a different story..). And if you read my original post more than just the first three lines, you know that I agree with you. (or, mostly at least).

you pointed out an example of those that do not damage the industry. in this case, probably so, so long as he is not redistributing it elsewhere.

However, we live in a society governed by laws, laws to protect property rights. The individual is not allowed to decide "ah, I'm not hurting anything". More often than not, they are and not realizing how. The owners of the software often have special and controlled programs to make software available, but that is up to them, not somebody who by their own personal perspective thinks what they are doing is justified.

If some guy comes into your house and steals your stuff to pay the rent, he feels justified. He feels he needs it more than you. You going be to sympathetic to his POV. You can't just decide what law you are not going to obey because to you that seems reasonable in your circumstances. If I own something, I sure as heck don't want anyone deciding for themselves that they have a right to it, for whatever reason. It is not theirs. They don't have any right to it. The kid just gets some shareware until he can afford something better.

That is what I do. I sure as heck would like some fancy commercial software for free. But I don't do it, I use shareware. I would not buy the fancy stuff either, does not mean I am going to justify my stealing it by that logic.

fkalich: Good for you, but I don't follow laws for the hell of it, I do it when I find them reasonable, and if I don't, I do as I please. The only thing I try to do it not to hurt the "little person". But, I think it's great that people think differently, so I encourage you to keep thinking that way, since it works for you. Just don't try to change my views.

There's an interesting point of view about piracy, and that is, its the only way for "poor" people to get "access" to something, can be books.

Curiously enough as part of my academic work I also work as an editor within academic publishing - journals, textbooks and monographs. Those publishers that I edit for have all signed up to some form of open commons/copyleft agreement and so make their publications available either at cost or for free. The reason why they do this is that they wish to provide academic texts to as wide a community as possible. In order to do so they feel their role is to try to change the system from within rather then from outside.

In a similar vein I also write and publish academic works and where I have been published by commercial publishers I have asked for open commons on my IP. That is of course my right as the holder of the IP and imo choosing to do this is very different to someone else appropriating IP through piracy.